orbital VS tailwind-clones

I tried to make 2 different desktop apps in 2021 and failed at both.

Atomic Edits[0] is a desktop app that helps YouTubers (like me) automatically remove silence in videos. It went viral on Reddit[1] but I realized later that building a video editing app with Electron (and not C++) was a bad choice. Library support video/audio editing was lacking.

Recut[2] is an app that basically does what Atomic Edits aimed to do, but actually succeeded. I think it's because it was a native Mac app which meant it had access to better libraries for editing videos. (That or I gave up too early on Atomic Edits.)

Orbital[3] is desktop app that allows you to search, filter, preview video files on your computer like YouTube. I posted on some subreddits and it had potential but I realized it wouldn't be enough to sustain me. It could've worked as a side-project but being as my main source of income was from YouTube ad-revenue, it wasn't worth it.

VideoHubApp[4] is a desktop app that does what Orbital aimed to do and actually earned a couple thousand dollars. It was started a few years earlier and was built with a similar tech stack.

All that is to say, I made desktop apps that had potential, but I did not have the time to spend making them feature complete.

[0] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/atomic-edits

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/ohbl6i/i_made_a_des...

[2] https://getrecut.com/

[3] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/orbital

[4] https://videohubapp.com/en/

As for the project, it’s open source - meaning the code is available for all to see, update, and report issues on GitHub (https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/Orbital).

In late 2020, I quit my job at a startup (first one out of college) to work on my YouTube channel and build my own company. At the time, I had 5k subscribers, and was earning 60$ a month from Google Ad Sense. My goal was to hit 100k subscribers with $2-3k monthly revenue by the end of 2021, and figure out a way to market my startup with the channel.

Today, I have ~7k subscribers, < $100 a month revenue, and 2 failed ideas. I have 6-8 months before I have to start looking for a job again (mostly because I'll be kicked out of my parents' health insurance). Here's what happened...

Jan - June 2021: I decided to learn a (more recent) web dev tech stack (to build my ideas in) and picked Vue.js and Tailwind CSS. I built a personal blog with Gridsome, transferred it to Nuxt JS, made tons of website clones[0] to get familiar with Tailwind CSS and all the while made at least 1 YouTube video a week.

June - July 2021: After gaining some confidence in my skills I built AtomicEdits[1] - an electron desktop app to automatically remove silence from videos. It was a problem I faced as a YouTuber and figured other people had it too. This idea went viral on reddit, but that's when I learned about the competition in this space and lost confidence. I required people to pay for a desktop app that just removed silence, while video editing apps like Descript, did this stuff for free on the web while also removing "umms" and "uhhs". In the end, I open-sourced it and went back to the drawing board.

Aug - Oct 2021: Around this time, I made one realization - it would be way faster for me to use React.js because there was more community support for relevant libraries. I talk more about this (in my most controversial video) on YouTube[2]. So I start learning React and build Orbital[3], a video file browser that turns your file system into YouTube. This was a smaller project that I wanted to sell to creators who deal with tons of media files. Yes, I fell trap to the creator economy hype. 0$ in sales but at least I built and released a product right?

Nov 2021: So what now? Well, I recently got interested in game development[4] and plan to transition my videos into a "devlog" format where I build a game in a week and document the process on YouTube. I don't have a big dream to build a huge startup and raise money anymore - I just want to make some small indie games and survive as a YouTuber.

My main takeaway is that it is very stressful to work when you are constantly hemorrhaging money. I saved up aggressively during my full-time job (because I was fortunate enough to have my education paid for by my parents) but losing ~1k a month really took a toll. Every failed project (or YouTube video) put more pressure to make the next one work.

My main tip to myself would be to focus on one thing. Grow YouTube channel or build a startup. Doing both at the same time is a pipe-dream. I failed in both aspects.

[0] https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/SuboptimalClones

Code on Github

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/SuboptimalEng/SuboptimalClones